Quality On Tap

I'm giving public kudos to the manufacturer of an increasing number of our faucets: Aquasource (http://www.aquasourcefaucet.org/). Because of idiosyncrasies in our home, we've had to make two repairs to a faucet we bought three years ago. All it takes is a call to their customer service department, and a new part is on the way, at no cost to us. 

Better yet, I describe the problem ("The handle on the faucet is getting harder to turn, and water has been dripping underneath the sink when the cold water is on") and customer service identifies the problem and sends the part ("You need a new ceramic three-way valve. We'll send you one. What's your address?).

When the part arrives, I call the same number and have patient, knowledgeable tech support to help me through the repair process (still at no charge). For a reasonable cost, the faucets are reliable and good-looking. We get them at Lowe's.

Now I'm eyeing the upstairs bathroom hardware and wondering how long before I'll have it in the budget to change those . . .

~ emrys

Dismantling a Dream

Since visiting Disney World when I was a teenager, I have loved treehouses. The Swiss Family Robinson part of the park sold me on the wonders of living in tight, handmade quarters high up off the ground. I have dreamed for many years of one day having the chance to make one of my own. In 2006 we purchased (or began a handy arrangement with a bank to live on) 3.25 acres of forest with a house on it. 

In 2007 I began building my treehouse. Soon I had Phase 1 finished and had moved on to Phase 2. Soon after the floorboards started going down on Phase 2, My Lovely daughter was born; and everything non-parental in my life slowed down. Including treehouse construction.

Fast forward to the spring of 2014, when my construction-savvy brother came visiting. He noticed that the growth of the treehouse-hosting trees was pushing the boards off their anchor bolts. Slowly but surely, my treehouse was becoming a disaster waiting to happen.

So over the last three months, my treehouse has come down. Rather than let it turn into a decrepit shambles hanging in the distant trees, I decided to give it a proper end.

Here is the roof, torn off the rafters and sent drifting to the ground:

 Phase 1 without a roof (note that the condemnable wooden ladder has been replaced by a safe aluminum one):

 The only proper end for wood that's been hanging out dutifully in a tree for seven years is sublimation in a funeral pyre:

 Phase 1 with rafters and half of the railing gone:

 Where my foot went through the deck, proving another facet of my brother's concern:

 View from below Phase 1, after the decking was removed:

 The first night of returning the elements to whence they came:

And My Lovely assistant, who is ever ready to help on such solemn occasions:

Phase 1 with only two whole boards left. I cut the main joists, because of what you'll see in the next image:

Seven years of growth consumed more of the shafts of the lag screws, pushing the (rotting) wood outwards. An attempt to unscrew the lags met with significant resistance. Of course! A hard wood like maple would certainly grip the screws ever tighter over time. I decided to leave them in, and mark the tree for anyone who might show up with a chainsaw.

All the while, autumn was falling. So my Two Wee Helpers took frequent breaks to enjoy the crackling shower of lofted leaves:

Phase 1 with only screwed-on chunks left:

Phase 2: the next target for demolition:

 An example of where the rotted board had torn off its anchors, leaving one joist precariously perched:

Only the three joists left on Phase 2:

It turns out the lag screws did come out of the soft hemlock:

The free-floating triangular support that held up one half of Phase 2, on its way to the ground:

Emboldened by my success on the hemlocks, I made another attempt to get the screws out of the maple tree. With some persistence and lots of grunting, I did finally get the screws loose, dismantling even the last scabs of wood from Phase 1.

Lastly, the maple tree that hosted Phase 1, stripped naked but for a few holes and the green paint with which I had marked it:

Adieu, fair Treehouse! Though it lacks a structure of which to brag, this little stand of trees will hold for me memories of brilliant plans, time with teenagers, and adventures with my Two Wee Ones. It was worth it.

~ emrys

Finally . . . That Last Little Thing

Since the day we bought the house, Sara has been complaining about the carpet in the upstairs bathroom. "Why do people put carpets in bathrooms? Don't they know it's just going to get wet?" Having two small children who love to splash during bath time brought the question continually to the forefront of our minds. And we have wondered, since the first time water splashed out of our shower, whether water was soaking into the carpet and corrupting the sheeting beneath our feet.

In September of last year we bit the bullet and decided to change the upstairs bath: new paint on the walls and linoleum on the floor. Here's a glimpse of its original state, complete with Little Splasher #2 and the foreshadowing cordless drill on the left:

 Note the dirty cream walls:

At 14 months, Micah is ready to take on the 14V DeWalt:

As you can see, no expense was spared in the original construction--not quite wall-to-wall carpeting:

 We are big fans of having main colors and accent colors in our rooms. Instead of uniform dirty cream, we went for a light blue main and bright blue accent color. (By the way, I can't recommend strongly enough the yellow pour spout that attaches to the rim of the paint can: saves paint, mess, and is reusable!):

Of course, all home improvement projects are family projects. Here is my lovely partner in decorating:

 Much of this project was done while Monkey See was off at school, which left Monkey Do to help. He's very serious about his role in the painting process:

This renovation happened as Hurricane Dos was entering his Serious Climbing Phase. So he got up on the toilet and reached for some tool on the changing table. I thought this was a good photo op, and grabbed the camera for a couple of shots:

And I was in mid-shutter-click when the changing pad slid and Micah lost his balance. This was my view right before reaching out to catch him:

He was fine.
When the painting was finished, the carpet awaited removal and replacement. Here's the scene with all the trim removed:

To our surprise, twenty-four years of shower spillage had not rotted out the sheeting.

It turns out that the easiest way to cut linoleum flooring for your bathroom is to use the recently removed carpet as a pattern, laid out in the living room. No measuring necessary! It is a testament to the size of our bathrooms that marking and cutting the linoleum flooring had to be done in two phases; the whole cutout of the bathroom floor would not fit in our living room:

When it came time to install the trim, Handyman Deux was ready to swing 22 ounces of nail-driving power. All right: his spirit was ready, but the flesh was a little too young.

So he set himself instead to understanding the tool at rest:

And with new color, new floor, and trim almost completely replaced, we have a new bathroom:

I said that the trim was almost completely replaced. The job was almost done in November of last year. This is June of this year. Even though we plowed through the big parts of this project in good stead, I didn't make time to cut, sand, and seal the one piece of trim that I had to totally replace. (And I needed to replace the leaky sweat valve on the toilet.) I had the wood; I had the tools; I had the polycrylic. I just didn't make the three hours in my schedule to get it done. That's how it often is with my projects: They are not completely finished because of some Last Little Thing that gets put off, as if its small size makes it unworthy of attention before all the Big Things of this world.

Well, two weeks ago I finally got That Last Little Thing done: replacing the sweat valve and trim behind the toilet:

Now the bathroom is done!

~ emrys

Screwing Up the Floor

Before we closed on the purchase of our house, the seller agreed to have the joists supporting the downstairs bathroom floor replaced. This room is the only one on the first floor not supported by concrete slab; below the bathroom is the original footprint of the house, which was built to be a spring and pump house in the 1920s. The space is a five-foot deep cellar, into which all the piping and equipment for water filtration and heating has been crammed. It's a maze of copper, PVC, and wire, whose complexity and tightness are only hinted at in this picture:

The gentleman who replaced the flooring in our soon-to-be house may have had some screws loose. Or he may not have had enough experience replacing floor joists in complicated settings. In order to hang sister joists next to the old ones, he discovered that piping and tubing got in the way. To solve this problem, he decided to cut the three center joists of the room right down the middle, like so:

 The problem with cutting through a floor joist is that, no matter how many nails you use to tie the two halves together, the joist is going to sag. This principle holds true especially in a bathroom, which sees a lot of traffic and holds a clothes washer and dryer. Thanks to this repairman's structural decision, the center of our bathroom floor had been descending over the last six years, to the tune of about two inches.

I had several conversations with my DIY heroes at 88-BC, our local building supply joint, and we settled on a plan to raise the floor by jacking it up. One of the guys in my congregation, who has probably put up, torn down, and modified more barns than I've ever stepped into, kindly allowed me to borrow two screw jacks which easily lifted the floor:

 (Thanks, Harold! You saved me a couple of hundred dollars renting or purchasing my own for a single use.)

The screw jacks pressed up on a pair of 4x4s that in turn lifted a single 4x4 set cross-wise under the four joists in the center of the room:

So as to avoid cracking any of the floor, I raised the joists in increments (though I was told by Harold later that my progression was overly cautious). I wrote on the 4x4 the distance from floor to joist after every turn of the screw:

 Then I inserted 2x4s as scabs along the length of the severed joists. The insertion was probably the hardest part, because the piping and electrical work made it impossible just to lift the board into place. It was a headache to weave these boards--all while crouched in a cellar space twelve inches too short for my frame--between tubes and pipes to get them in place. Plus I had a four-and-a-half-year-old helper, whose insistence that she "turn off the light to see if her pencil drawing will glow in the dark" did not speed things up. But I did it with eight boards, then anchored them in place with TimberLOK screws (handed to me by my Big Kid helper, who was genuinely helpful at this point), which my trustworthy sources tell me are as strong as carriage bolts in this application:

With a little prayer, I removed the jacks. Only a few complaints sounded from the floor as it returned to supporting its own weight. I went up stairs to the bathroom. Lo and behold, the floor is still hight and level. I hope that it stays so for a very long time. Should it sink again, I'll have to call in the pros.

Thanks to Jared and the crew at 88-BC for their expertise and assistance!

~ emrys

The Green Pan

In about 1995, during my university years, I bought a huge Texas frying pan. (I don't remember whether it was called a "Texas" frying pan in Montreal, but that's what they call it in Yankee country.) It was made out of thin steel with a coating of teflon. Great for cooking up big batches of stir fry to feed hordes of college students. My most enduring memory of using the pan was to make stir fry for a floor event in our residence hall. I discovered at the grocery store that in Montreal they sell horse meat and that it's considerably cheaper than beef. So I made stir fry with horse meat. Everyone loved the dish--and had frequent seconds--until they discovered in conversation what kind of protein was in it. Then a few backed off.

After fourteen years, three or four moves, and too much use of metal spatulas, the pan was pretty beat up. The teflon came off the bottom in occasional flakes, which I've heard is not healthy. At the end of last year, it was time for Old Texas Faithful to go.

 In Walmart and other purveyors of fine goods, I had passed a new invention: ceramic-coated frying pans. I was intrigued, but had not yet made the decision to buy. My brother Chris, who has become a Foodie of Wisdom and Simplicity, heard about my investigations and bought us a Green Pan for Christmas.

 We have used it for six months now, and it is serving us very well. The ceramic coating works as well as teflon for a non-stick surface, and we're no longer consuming tiny black chips of mysterious bonded chemicals as additional spices. Thanks, Chris!

~ emrys